Solar Lights for Internally Displaced People in Chile

The Great Chiloé Is­land is loc­ated in the cent­ral-south part of Chile. On Decem­ber 25, 2016 the Is­land was hit by a 7.6 mag­nitude earth­quake. This dis­aster im­pacted many people as well as the is­land’s in­fra­struc­ture. Houses have been severely dam­aged, many people have to live without ac­cess to elec­tri­city, and roads have been de­struc­ted. Ad­di­tion­ally, the is­land also suffered from a red tide, pro­du­cing tox­ic and harm­ful ef­fects on people and an­im­als. As a res­ult, 5,000 people’s main source of in­come was put in danger. The is­land was de­clared in a state of cata­strophe by the Chilean gov­ern­ment. A total of 19,106 people were trans­ferred to se­cur­ity zones on the main­land and had to leave all their be­long­ings be­hind.

Hab­it­at for Hu­man­ity Chile is an or­gan­iz­a­tion that pro­motes the rights of fam­il­ies and com­munit­ies in vul­ner­able situ­ations, by provid­ing hous­ing to im­prove their qual­ity of life. With their pro­gram called “Our Chil­dren Re­turn Home”, they aim to im­prove hous­ing and con­struct ap­pro­pri­ate liv­ing spaces for chil­dren and youth with spe­cial needs and ill­nesses, so they can con­tin­ue their med­ic­al treat­ment un­der the care of their own fam­ily. In or­der to ex­pand the num­ber of fam­il­ies they can sup­port, there is ur­gent need for tech­no­lo­gic­al in­nov­a­tions and clean en­ergy sources.